Canepa: Rocky being Rocky paid off bigtime in Aztecs' last win

Whenever his San Diego State football teams took one of their frequent beatings, Chuck Long, the other Long, always said it was getting better, that he saw improvement. But then, besides being a bad head coach, Chuck was a victim of a rare form of myopia not even his rose-colored glasses could repair.

Things never got better. There wasn’t any improvement.

Now the current Long, Rocky, is full-on 20-20. There isn’t much bull stuck in his craw, whatever a craw is. He will blame himself when things go south, as they did earlier this season, when his Aztecs had difficulty stopping people.

Being a college head coach, he took the hit when his kicking game was atrocious. He’s the one who brought out the mathematical chart showing him when it was wise to go for it on fourth down and not attempt a field goal or extra point.

Rocky Long is a risk-taker - some say too much so - but at least he dares to be great, and if there’s a bush, he isn’t going to beat around it. His attitude carries over to his players. What I like most about him as a coach is that in real time he not only can sense where his guys are mentally, but where the other guys are. When the game is afoot, he is aware.

As he was last Saturday night. The Aztecs were in Reno playing a good Nevada team and State lost starting quarterback Ryan Katz (to what would turn out to be a broken ankle) in the first quarter. Enter Adam Dingwell, who hadn’t been afforded many opportunities in practice or games, and he rallied his side to tie it and send the game into overtime.

Nevada scored a touchdown and kicked the extra point on its first overtime possession. So did State, on Dingwell’s small pass turned into a highlight film touchdown by tight end Gavin Escobar. So what did Rocky do then? He wanted to go home. He ordered a two-point try, and Dingwell found tight end Adam Roberts alone in the end zone.

Game over. Long was jumping around like a kid. His Aztecs are 5-3 now, a game from being bowl-eligible, as they prepare for UNLV here late Saturday afternoon.

This wasn’t the Mathematical Chart Rocky. This was just Rocky, sensing it was time to take the black arrow out of the quiver.

“I think it was mostly psychological,” he says. “We went for two because we had emotion and momentum on our side. It was
totally
in our favor, and I saw it. You can sense it in games - one minute you’re playing great and the next as bad as you possibly can.”

Kind of like the Chargers of the past few weeks.

“Yeah, and it’s the same in college football,” Long says. “A lot of guys pre-plan that (going for two). I don’t. No. 1, there wasn’t any hesitancy because of the momentum we had built up. When we scored on that second play in overtime I decided to go for two right there, but I had to call a timeout because the PAT team already was on the field.